The fan industry in France had become of such importance under Henry IV., that it was necessary to regulate it by statute; certain concessions were therefore granted in December 1594 to the several bodies of craftsmen engaged in the art of fan-making. These were confirmed, and fresh regulations added, towards 1664. On a petition presented to Louis XIV. in 1673 by the master fan-makers to the number of sixty, they were constituted a corporate body by the edict of March 23rd of that year, and their privileges further strengthened by edicts of December 1676 and January and February 1678. These ordained that the company should be ruled by four jurors, two of whom were re-nominated every year in September in an assembly at which every master could assist irrespectively. No one could be a master without having served four years’ apprenticeship and having produced a _chef-d’œuvre_. Nevertheless, the sons of a master were exempt from the _chef-d’œuvre_ as well as the members who married the widows or daughters of masters. The widows enjoyed the privileges of their departed husbands so long as they remained single. They could not, however, engage new apprentices. The entrance fee was fixed at four hundred livres. [Illustration: Photo by J. Leroy Cut Vellum Fan with insertions of mica, painted with subjects of Actæon, &.c. ivory stick, French, end of XVI. century. Musée de Cluny.] In 1753, the period of the highest development of the industry, there were no less than one hundred and fifty master fan-makers in Paris, and from a rare book (_Journal du Citoyen_), published at the Hague in 1754, we learn the prices usually obtained: Wooden fans (les éventails de bois de palissandre), 6 to 18 livres a dozen; fans in gilt wood (bois d’or), 9 to 36 livres a dozen; those partly of wood and partly of ivory (les maistres brins en yvoire et la gorge en os), 24 to 72 livres a dozen. Ivory fans, 48 to 60 livres a dozen; others more elaborate sold for 30 or 40 pistoles apiece. The fan-makers were united with the wood-polishers and lute-makers by the edict of August 11th, 1776, as was also the painting, carving, and varnishing relative to these crafts. The proportions of the folded fan have varied considerably at different periods, in obedience to the caprices of fashion, and this, together with other features, is a general indication as to date. An attempt is here made, by means of a series of diagrams, to formulate, from well-authenticated examples, a system of development; but this can only be accepted in a general way, since during most periods, and especially during the eighteenth century, many exceptions to this rule might be cited.